CSUN Student Wins Wilson Foreign Affairs Fellowship
Jarahn Hillsman has become the first Cal State Northridge graduate ever and the only California student this year to receive an award from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
Hillsman, who lives in Los Angeles, won one of the foundation’s 10 Graduate Foreign Affairs Fellowships, which will pay for his two-year master’s degree program at Columbia University.
The home campuses of other recipients included Brown, Harvard, Howard and Georgetown universities.
Hillsman, who wants to work in Africa, said he became aware of the Wilson fellowship as a State Department intern in Washington, D.C. He also spent a semester in CSUN’s international exchange program at the University of Zimbabwe.
“I hope to address issues such as AIDS, debt relief, government corruption and poverty,” said Hillsman, who graduated from CSUN in May with a bachelor’s in urban studies and planning.
The purpose of the foundation’s Graduate Foreign Affairs Fellowship is to prepare top students for careers as foreign service officers with the State Department.
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